Abstraction

Well, what is abstraction? Put simply, I'd say it is looking at only the important details of something to keep the overall picture in mind and make decision making easier and quicker. But what many of us fail to realize is that we use abstraction in our daily lives more often than we think! Technically speaking if we try to dig deep into the trivialities of every insignificant matter, there would be no end to asking why... And while looking for reason is good, once the truth or a course of action has been established, it shouldn't be dwelled upon time and again. In other words, once the logic behind something is figured out, we should act instinctively whenever a similar situation crops up, as the luxury of time might not always be on our side!

But when we do look into the minutia of an issue for the first time, we are faced with the paradox of 'right and wrong', the two sides of the same coin... Right and wrong are highly subjective and relative terms, meaning what might be right for you, may be wrong for me and vice-versa! Instead I think one's logic must be based on one's goals and what one deserves, which form a much more absolute basis for judgement.

Now, if you need an example of abstraction, I'll probably be able to furnish an experience that I'm sure is very familiar to us all. Consider the case where someone provokes you, let's say by insulting your family without grievance... What is your first reaction? Do you lose your temper and come out swinging? What incites such a dramatic response? Is it love? Well it might as well be, but love is just an abstraction for the noesis that if we simply ignore any such act or comment, it would display a rather doormat-like attitude, thereby increasing the chances of something more severe but along the same lines happening again. So it is all about making a statement! This is what emotions like revenge are borne out of... I guess we can say that love is a chemical process that helps us make the appropriate choices at a moment's notice, without which life would become totally mechanical, boring, laborious, and quite frankly a drag. 

So you see abstraction is much more than just a concept with a textbook definition. All of us live and breathe abstraction at every single step, and I believe that this has partially helped disprove the well known saying 'think before you leap'! This also finds an unlikely ally in Darwin's theory of evolution! The philosophy of 'survival of the fittest' has laid down a lot of pre-programmed rules deep within our psyche for our own benefit. Do we think before we taste our favorite victuals? No, we don't! Doing things spontaneously or using abstraction, makes our lives a lot easier, so that we reserve a greater fraction of our thinking capacity for concerns that actually demand greater cognition. All this makes the key role of abstraction in our lives plainly visible, so much so that I'd dare to say that without abstraction we would all be zombies fumbling in the dark!